


At Home in His Arms

by Midorisakura (Calacious)



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Cult Ending (Dream Daddy), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, POV Second Person, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Midorisakura
Summary: You scurry back in terror from the hand that reaches out for you, expecting more pain, more torture, not the gentle touch of a friend.





	At Home in His Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csi_sanders1129](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csi_sanders1129/gifts).



> Mele Kalikimaka, I hope that you enjoy this. I wasn't sure if I should put it in third or second person point of view, but followed the direction of your prompt.

The light's blinding, and you blink away tears, crying out and flinching away when someone touches you. The touch is different, though. It's not hard and harsh. There is no pain to accompany it.

You've grown so used to pain that you're not sure how to handle the gentleness, and you fear that it's just another trick of  _ his _ . The man who suckered you into believing that he was a good, upstanding family man trapped in a loveless marriage. The man who seduced you, promising to leave his wife, only to reveal his true colors _ after _ you'd made love on his yacht. The man who locked you up and tortured you for days without end. The psycho who turned out to be the head of a sick, sadistic cult. The man who broke you, and took away your daughter's spirit, enslaving you for an eternity of hellish mental, physical and sexual torture.

"Hey, you're going to be okay. I've got you now." The voice is scratchy, familiar, and for a moment you forget how to breathe, because this trick has been played on you before.

Robert's face swims into view. You blink, hoping that it's not just another mirage, like the others, that he's really there, and sob in relief when he's still there when you open your eyes.

"You didn't disappear." You reach up to touch the face, hands shaking, and attempt to hold back your tears of relief when it's real, it's not an illusion, like it has been in the past.

It's useless. Tears flow freely down your battered, aching face.

_ He'd _ given you a shave just the other day, letting the blade of the straight razor slice and carve marks into your skin, leaving your face a bloody mess, rubbing salt into the wounds afterwards, making you scream yourself hoarse and then...and then...your stomach does a somersault at the memory and you push it aside before it can overwhelm you.

You blink. Robert's face is still there. He's smiling, though his eyes are filled with worry.

"I'm not a ghost, or an illusion, sweetheart," he says, cupping your face and brushing at your tears with a thumb.

You lean into the touch. It feels like a lifetime since someone's been this tender with you, though you reason that it's probably only been a couple of days since Joseph -- Satan incarnate -- took you.

"I --"

"Sh." Robert places a finger on your lips and pulls you up.

Unsteady on your feet after being chained, who the hell knows where, for how long, you list to the side. Robert catches you. You don't mind the pain that accompanies the touch as Robert accidentally brushes against your bruises and cuts. It’s a gentle, kind pain. 

He wraps you in something warm. You shiver and duck your head. You'd thought that you'd never be truly warm again, outside of the times when  _ he _ would hold a lighter or a blowtorch to your skin.

"Steady," Robert says. "I've got you."

"M-Mary what...I saw...the kids...J-J--" you stumble over his name and shudder. Robert pulls you toward his chest and cradles you for a moment, holding you until the tremors all but stop.

"Mary's fine," Robert assures you, pressing a kiss to your forehead. He runs his fingers through your hair. The touch feels good. Almost too good after what happened to you.

"The kids are fine. Don't worry about the rest." Robert doesn't even say  _ his _ name. It's better that way, you think. You doubt you can handle hearing that man's name uttered by anyone ever again. The things  _ he _ did to you...the things  _ he _ promised to do to you...don't bear mentioning.

"Sh, babe," Robert says. His lips brush against yours. "Don't think about it. Just think about you and me and Amanda."

"Amanda!" Your heart hammers against your rib cage, your eyes widen. You can't believe that you forgot to ask about her, though  _ he  _ spent countless hours trying to make you do just that. You swallow convulsively as bile floods your throat though you've not eaten anything in days.

"She's not, she's...she's..." You can't even get the words out as you picture her, eyes dead, face cold and empty, possessed.

"She's fine. Mary and Val are with her and the kids," Robert assures you. "I promise you that everything's alright now."

You blink back tears. You want to believe Robert, but everything that you'd seen, everything you experienced and felt, is still right there, in your head, under your skin, and you can't seem to stop seeing any of it. It just keeps playing over and over again.

"I just can't stop seeing her, what  _ he _ did to her, to...to you." You search Robert for a bloody wound, shaky hands groping every part of him.

You find nothing.

Heart in your throat, you try to back away, thinking -- knowing -- this has to be another one of  _ his _ tricks, but Robert won't let you. He pulls you close again, holding you against his body, tight.

You can hear the hammering of Robert's heart, feel his fingers in your hair, hear softly uttered words of comfort that you can't make out, and all you can think is, ‘No, no, no, it's not true, it's not true.’

"Just another trick," you mutter, lips moving against Robert's chest. You can smell the rich leather of Robert's jacket, the fresh scent of wood shavings, the piquant odor of whiskey, and a touch of lemon verbena. Mary's scent.

"Not a trick," Robert says. "You were drugged. All of the things you saw, all of the things that  _ he  _ said, they weren't real. They were hallucinations. It's..." Robert swallows, hard and shudders. "It's what  _ he _ does."

"I'm sorry," you say, knowing that this must've happened to Robert. That it must be why Robert keeps to himself and drinks so much.

You rub at the tattoo on Robert's hand. You've got a matching one now,  _ he _ made sure of that. It makes you sick, thinking about Robert, or anyone else, going through what you did.

You wonder who came for Robert, who saved him when the devil was toying with him. It must've been Mary. Must be why the two of them are so close. Why Mary stays with the devil in spite of what  _ he _ does. What  _ he _ did to Robert. What  _ he _ did to you.

"It's over," Robert says. "I've come to terms with what happened. It's never going to happen to anyone else, ever again." There's such a ring of finality to Robert's voice that you shiver in response.

Robert's hand is warm on the back of your neck, comforting, thumb rubbing a soothing pattern that helps ease some of the tension, some of the pain in your aching neck and back. There are words carved there. _Satan's bitch whore._ _He'd_ laughed when he'd done it. You passed out, came to, and _he_ was...you can’t think about it, _won’t_ think about it. 

"Let's get you home," Robert says, and you wonder, momentarily, which home Robert means, his or yours.

Val is still visiting, at least she had been a few days after Amanda's graduation party, before you’d left with  _ him _ on your fateful trip. A three hour tour to hell that had lasted a lifetime. You have no idea how long ago that was, and part of you doesn’t want to know. 

Robert and Val are working things out. You don't want to intrude.

When you think about what  _ he _ did to you, what _ he  _ must’ve done to Robert, Robert's need for time to sort through the shit in his head before getting involved with anyone, like you, is starting to make a lot of sense. You don't know if you can ever be intimately involved with anyone ever again. Not after what happened.

You don't want to bring back bad memories for Robert, or make Val uncomfortable, but you really don't want to be alone right now. Amanda's great, but you don't want to burden her with this. You don't want her to even know about this.

"Easy, there, sailor." It's Mary.

Her hand's not as warm as Robert's, but it's steady, comforting and you don't mind having it wrapped around your wrist as she places one of your arms over her shoulders, Robert taking the other, and helps carry your weight. Mary squeezes your wrist, and you have to blink back tears of gratitude at how gentle she is. Your wrists are raw from the shackles, or cuffs, or whatever it is that  _ he _ , a demon with the face of a man, had used to lock you up.

"You're gonna be just fine," she says.

"Amanda?" you ask, frantic. Your lips are dry, bleeding, your throat parched.

"Back at your place, shooting cocaine, cursing up a storm, and drinking wine by the box-load," Mary says, sarcastic. She sighs and rolls her eyes when Robert gives her a look that you probably weren't supposed to see. "She's fine. Val's with her and the kids. They're having a sleepover and binge watching, ‘Long Haul Ice Road Paranormal Ghost Truckers.’"

They must've busted out the DVDs that you gave Amanda for her graduation. You smile, or try to. You want to say something, but the words get stuck in your throat. 

"You're okay, sailor," Mary says. "We're gonna get you home, and Robert's gonna take good care of you."

"How, how long?" you ask, unsure if you really want to know the answer.

"Long enough," Mary says, voice bitter and brittle.

"Just a little over a week," Robert says, voice quiet. There's a hard, angry edge to it that, for some reason, warms your heart in spite of everything that’s happened.

It took just a little over a week for your life to be shattered. It felt like an eternity. You feel like you're still there, and that  _ he's _ still playing with your mind, that none of this is real.

"The drugs will wear off in a couple of days," Mary says, rubbing at your wrist. "Then you'll be right as rain." She gives you a tight smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. You wonder if  _ he _ did this to her, too, and pray to a god that you don’t really believe in that it didn’t. 

You doubt that you'll ever be right as anything again, and wonder what kind of drugs  _ he _ had you on. Whatever they were, they made you see ghosts, demons, and creatures that would have terrified the shit out of you if you'd happened upon them while cryptid hunting with Robert before he’d told you that he needed some space.

At some point, while Mary and Robert are hauling you out of wherever it is that  _ he’d _ kept you, you pass out. You're in and out of consciousness for an indeterminate amount of time, hearing voices that you can't attach to names or faces. Some of them are pleasant, others are not.

Nightmares plague you, and you scream yourself voiceless.  _ His _ face is always there when you close your eyes. _ His _ voice is superimposed over the other voices that float around you.  _ His _ eyes glow red as blood in the darkness of your mind.

Someone says, "Drink," and though you're afraid, you drink. It's water, not acid or bleach. It's cool and soothing on your parched throat.

A hand touches your cheek, your arms, your legs, your back. Someone cries. You want to say something comforting, but your lips won't move, you're incapable of making sound.

You open your eyes when something wet and warm touches your skin. You cry out in pain, because whatever this is, it hurts. It hurts, and you just want to get away from the pain, from  _ him _ , but you're too weak to fight. Too weak to free yourself.

You succumb to this new brand of torture, hoping that he'll be quick about it. After a few terror-filled minutes, you realize that the insistent, painful touch is nothing but the gentle stroking of a wet washcloth over your wounds and you stop panicking. You register, as though drunk, that it's not  _ him _ who's doing this to you, that this is not torture, but it's something designed to help you. A bath. The washing away of blood and dirt, of _ his _ hands on you.

"Robert." Your lips form the name, because you know now that you're safe, that  _ he’s _ not with you anymore, but there is no sound to accompany the movement of your lips.

Warm eyes smile down at you, a hand gently strokes your trembling lips, and then you're up and moving, and it's all too much. You pass out again.

When you next open your eyes, it's to the sight of a slightly hairy chest. Arms are wrapped tightly around you, legs entwined with yours, the sound of a steady heartbeat is thrumming in your ear. You're warm. Comfortable. Safe.

"You awake?" Robert asks in a voice that is husky with sleep.

Unable to form words, you nod.

"Go back to sleep," Robert says, stroking your hair, pressing his lips to the back of your neck. "You've been through hell and back. You need to rest."

You have been through hell, you're not one hundred percent certain that you're back yet. And though you've been in and out of consciousness for who knows how long, you take Robert's suggestion and close your eyes. You let the steady rise and fall of Robert's chest, the rhythmic tattoo of the man's heart, lull you into a peaceful sleep. A sleep that, since this whole nightmare began, is blissfully free of dark, horrific images. 

"You two decent in there?" Mary asks as she bursts into the room without knocking or waiting for an answer, waking both you and Robert, who utters sleep-slurred profanity at his friend.

Robert tightens his hold on you and shields his eyes from the light that spills into the room at her entry. She's got one hand on her hip and holds a duffel bag, yours to be precise, in the other. She tosses the duffel onto the bed.

"Figured that you'd need some clothes," Mary says. "Once you come up for air, that is, sailor." She winks at you and saunters out of the room, not bothering to shut the door behind her.

"Don't worry about Amanda, or Val," Mary calls back to you and Robert. "They're both getting along with each other swimmingly."

Robert groans, and rolls so that his back is to the door, somehow rolling you with him so that you're both still very much enveloped in a comfortable embrace. His eyes are half-lidded, and you can't help but smile at the dopey way he's looking at you.

A vulnerable, sleepy Robert is definitely something wonderful to witness, you think, and your heart skips a beat when it finally clicks that Robert brought you home, not to your own place, but to his.

You fall asleep pondering what that means, and decide, with your last coherent thought, that it doesn't really matter, because you're with Robert, in Robert's bed, and the demon masquerading as a human will never be able to hurt you again. Robert had promised you that, and in all the time you've known him, he has never broken a promise to you.

You wake, some time later, and breathe in the musky scent of Robert -- wood, leather, whiskey, lemon verbena -- and smile.

It's pleasant.

It's safe.

It's...home.

 


End file.
